WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?

 

These are questions my characters had to consider as they made their own life-changing decisions. These are things I have grappled with in making my own decisions. These are my thoughts. 

When does Life begin? Perhaps the answer is in the question. Life begins at the beginning. A sperm enters an egg and becomes one cell. All the information for what comes next is included there in that cell. Amazing, isn't it? 

Somehow as that single cell divides, it takes with it the directions for becoming a nerve cell, a brain cell, a skin cell, and on and on and on until that simple single cell becomes the complex creature we know as a baby. From where does that direction come? 

I think of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and imagine the grand orchestration from the Creator creating that marvelous creation of His. All of that begins with a beginning. 

But that was not what I was taught. I was taught that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That an organism, in the course of its development, goes through all the stages of those forms of life from which it has evolved. In other words, we go through the evolutionary process from fish to man in the womb. 

Really? Perhaps that was what they thought before Ultrasound. Now you can measure the heartbeat at 8 weeks. So in 64 days after conception, God has orchestrated the symphony of that baby's life directing one cell to be muscle, another to be a toenail, another to become a heart. You can see the embryo suck its thumb. Yet, it is the same single cell that we started with, only with directions to be something special. Incredible. 

The lips of that embryo will one day give the smile that touches a heart. Somehow words will come from the movement of special organs. That voice will have a uniqueness to it. Why? How?

Are we to think that God's direction stops there? If God could do that with a single cell, what can He do with our lives? What could WE do with our lives if we would allow ourselves to be a part of his fantastic orchestra? Instead of marching to the beat of a different drummer.

But children are not taught this wonder. They are given lessons on sex directed by Planned Parenthood and are taught the location of the closest abortion clinic. Planned Parenthood then sells those aborted baby parts. 

I think of the Scripture in Psalms, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" And I wonder.